A SYDNEY carbon credits company thought to have been running some of the world’s biggest offsets deals appears to be a fake, shifting paper certificates instead of saving forests and cutting greenhouse emissions.

Shift2neutral says it has made high-profile events such as the Australian PGA golf championship and the Sydney Turf Club’s world-first ”green race day” carbon neutral.

But deals to generate more than $1 billion worth of carbon credits by saving jungles from logging in the Philippines, the Congo and across south-east Asia do not seem to exist.

The global network of investors and carbon offset certifiers supposed to be brokering deals with foreign presidents and the World Bank can be traced to a modest office in a shopping village in Westleigh, staffed by shift2neutral’s founder, Brett Goldsworthy.

Mr Goldsworthy insists every certificate for carbon offsets he issues has value and represents a real reduction in greenhouse emissions somewhere in the world. That is what he has told puzzled investors and companies who have unwittingly sought to reduce their carbon footprint.

But when pressed for examples of any specific project that has cut emissions to generate the carbon credits the company offers for sale, he was unable to provide even one.